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I just wanted to give a small update. The Flip n'Grip wallet project has NOT been abandoned!

My big dream in life is to create a company that designs and produces products that are fun, simple and amazing. The Flip n'Grip wallet was a sample just that. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful on the first attempt and my funding ran dry.

In order to continue pursuing my goal, I let the Flip n'Grip sit on the back-burner while I developed another product that was simpler and less costly to develop. It's a sweet belt that I launched today on Kickstarter. If you loved the Flip n'Grip, I think you'll love this too!

If the funding is successful for the new belt, I will be able to finish up the engineering and design improvements to the Flip n'Grip and it will be relaunched! It should also bring several other products to life that are in the works.

Thanks for your patience and support. Have a spectacular day!

BJ Minson

P.S.
the patent on the wallet is in the works (you can see it here). http://www.google.com/patents/US20140014676

Hi everyone! First things first, I apologize for taking forever to do an update. I didn’t want to send out incremental updates with no real meat to them, so I saved it all up for this one. Okay, here we go…

I’m Done with School!

I was really hoping the Flip n’Grip would fund and I would be able to ditch graduate school and just start a business. As you know, that didn’t work out so I’ve been spending a semi-insane amount of time and effort over the last 6 month cranking out my masters degree in mechanical engineering. You can imagine, writing a 70 page paper titled “The Design of a Versatile and Disposable Microfluidic Chip for Automated Sample Preparation and Nucleic Acid Extraction” was quite painful and boring. But it’s over now and I officially graduated yesterday. Woohoo!

Nearly Made it on “Shark Tank”

In April, I got a call from the reality TV show “Shark Tank”. I had submitted an email application four months earlier and only got an auto-reply that they were done casting at the time. Now they were casting for the new season 5 and they loved the Flip n’Grip video from my Kickstarter project. They asked me to fill out a ton of paperwork and make them a video about my product. I ended up making it past several rounds of cuts over the course of about two months. In the end, the producers cut me a few weeks before they started their first rounds of filming. They said they had too many people with a great product, but no real business behind it and they encouraged me to try again next year. Although I didn’t make it onto the show, it was exciting to see they loved the product and seriously considered it for “Shark Tank”.

The Full Patent

The Flip n’Grip is patent pending! Before I launched the Kickstarter, I used a gift certificate that I won in a school competition, to pay for a provisional patent. It basically costs about $2000 and gives you a year to work out the bugs before filing a more expensive and full utility patent. I was hoping to pay for the full utility patent after a successful Kickstarter campaign. When it didn’t fund, I had to figure out a way to pay for it myself. If I didn’t do it, the wallet would have become “public domain” meaning anyone could have started ripping off the Flip n’Grip. I didn’t want the work I had spent on it making someone else wealthy. I saved up everything I had and spent the big bucks to file the full utility patent.

The New Design: Flip n’Grip 2.0

In my spare time, I have been working on an improved version of the Flip n’Grip in hopes of cutting the cost quite a bit. I really wanted to get costs down when I initially launched, but Kickstarter was being saturated with wallets and I felt like I just needed to go for it. In the end, that was probably the biggest reason the Flip n’Grip didn’t fund. I am in the process of figuring out the pricing costs for the new version and I’m expecting it to be $30 -$40 less. It’s taken a while on the redesign because I’m making sure the quality is still the highest priority. It’s getting very close.

Another Kickstarter?

I’ve been amazed at the positive feedback from all of the awesome backers and people who came across the project after it was over. I’ve received tons of emails and messages from people asking me if they can get their hands on a prototype, or where they can buy one. I’ve also had a large number of people ask me to do another Kickstarter campaign. I love designing products and creating things and it’s my dream to have my own successful business doing just that. I’ve looked at a number of funding sources to make that happen and Kickstarter is one of the greatest. Not only does it provide funding without taking equity, it’s also a great way to get a lot of feedback on the product. Kickstarter is a great platform and because of that, I am making preparations for the Flip n’Grip Version 2.0. Realistically, making something like this happen is a ton of work and takes time, but it’s on it's way...

We personally thank every single one of you for backing our project. Ultimately, it was an unsuccessful Kickstarter project, but still a personal success for us. We learned a ton and we found some of the most passionate supporters ever. We can't tell you how awesome it is to see total strangers as excited about our product as we are. We have nearly 400 backers and made it almost halfway to our lofty 100k goal and we are proud of that. Thank you so much for your comments, emails and encouraging words.

We are excited about the future for the Flip n'Grip. Tons of people are anxious to get one and we don't want to disappoint. We are working hard on plan B right now and we will update you soon on our next step. In the mean time, feel free to follow us on twitter or friend us on Facebook so we can stay in touch. And don't be afraid to shoot us an email with any other questions, comments or suggestions.

We're down to the last 10 days of our project and we just hit $40,000 and have over 300 backers! We think that's amazing and we're proud that you've all helped us get this far. It's been really cool seeing so many positive and enthusiastic supporters. We also wanted to especially thank actor Nathan Fillion and his twitter followers who really gave us a wave of support. That one awesome tweet brought nearly 100 new backers. We are extremely grateful to everyone so far that have backed us and helped spread the word.

On the flip side, it's starting to look like we're running out of time to make our funding goal. We're staying optimistic, because who knows what can happen with 10 days left? We are starting to get inquiries about backup plans if we don't make it. We're beginning to consider our options, but at this point we'll see how the Kickstarter finishes up and we'll make decisions from there. We'll keep everyone up to speed on the next step of the process.

It's not over yet, we still have 10 days and we plan on pushing hard with what time we have left. Feel free to join us by tweeting, facebooking and telling everyone about the Flip n'Grip Wallet. Thanks a million!

Hi Everyone!

We are really excited about this project and all of the support we have had so far. Thanks a million to all of our backers! We are a third of the way to our funding goal with 21 days left. We really appreciate all of the comments and encouraging words.

We have had some requests for video of the cards going in and out of the Flip n'Grip. So we made a short video with a little more detail. Enjoy the video and let us know if you have any other questions. Thanks again!